


Four lives that Owen Harper saved + one he didn't

by epithetta



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 00:00:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epithetta/pseuds/epithetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it's a conscious decision. Sometimes it's afterthought. Sometimes it's pity. Sometimes it's love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four lives that Owen Harper saved + one he didn't

**Author's Note:**

> Written utilising the writerinadrawer 3.99 prompt: 4+1 challenge. Each story needs to contain a different color of the rainbow, 1000 words. Thanks also to curriejean for the lovely beta.

1\. 

First he swipes the mouth for vomit and starts the breathing, a tangy, bitter taste on his tongue. A few breaths of his own, then some for her. 

He pounds with his fists, sharp staccato—they call it a cardiac thump—and it's not very effective. His hands are too small, and he has to use his whole body to do it, like raising a knife to stab a body, really, up over his head and then slamming down so hard that his knees leave the floor.

She coughs and splutters, arms like the awkward limb-floundering of a green colt trying to stand, and Owen breathes a sigh of relief, his own heart beating enough for the two of them.

"Fuck," his mother says, when she opens her eyes and sees him. "Oh fuck. It's you."

2\. 

Owen cocks his head at the creature in the concrete cell with its sickly yellow walls and wonders if they might not need a paint change. Maybe it's the colour that's making her ill.

The Weevil lies on the floor in a fetal position, her moans like a sick puppy whining.

"Oh Janet," he mumbles, because he doesn't want Jack to think he's actually sympathetic to a Weevil. Well, he just doesn't want recordable evidence. Jack already knows that he has a soft spot for Janet. 

Janet holds her sides and looks at him, open-mouthed. He's long since stopped trying to read her facial expressions.

Once he can sedate her and is in with the scanner--easy to do while she's in such pain—he can run it over her and look for anomalies. Well, what counts for anomalies in the Weevil physiology. He's got it pretty sussed. The screen maps her internal organs: a liver-thing, three hearts, possibly, and a stomach, bloody huge stomach until…

"Oh Janet— _really_?"

He turns around and rifles through her bedding, and sure enough, she's eaten about half of the polystyro filling from her mattress. Janet squeaks and rolls a little. Owen sighs and ups the dosage of sedative, applying the airsyringe to her neck while calling out, because he knows that Jack is watching; he always watches when Owen goes into the cells. 

"Bring a gurney, Jack. Have Ianto prep the surgery."

3\. 

"Bloody Hell, Tosh, when was the last time you had the battery checked?" Owen slams the bonnet down and glares at her. 

Tosh shrugs. "I don't know. April?"

"It's March."

"Last April."

Owen stares at the seams of the bonnet and sighs. "You know, sometimes I wonder how you're the technician," he gripes. "Or is this a woman thing? Not taking care of your cars?"

Tosh shoulders her purse and glares at him before smiling. "I think Suzie would take you to task on that. Are you going to jump me or not?"

He dusts his hands, but the grease and orange grit of rust will have to be scrubbed off. So instead, he offers her his elbow. "Come on. I'll give you a ride. You can get this death-trap towed tomorrow."

Her smile makes him wonder what the rest of her looks like. She takes his arm and they saunter off to the other end of the garage. 

Neither of them notices the growing puddle of brake fluid on the cement.

4\. 

She's bloody gorgeous but daft, he thinks when he pulls her away from the edge of the cliff, just a little foolhardy, giggling with her mates and not paying enough attention to the dangers of fucking about on an edge that has no fencing. _Uni students_ , he thinks as he rolls his eyes, as if he isn't one of them. He pretends that he isn't all the time.

She pushes her blonde hair out of her face and stares at him for a split second with those blue eyes like the sky overhead before smiling brightly. "Oh! Thank you! I'm just a little dizzy," she says, and he walks her further in on the ground to the grassy section of the cliff edge and helps her sit down. "Too many alco-pops last night," she adds sheepishly.

Owen offers her the unopened bottle of water he's brought with him, shaking it slightly in front of her face. "I wouldn't recommend navigating the cliffs of Dover even sober, let alone hungover," he warns her, and then kicks himself because he sounds like a complete tosser. 

"Oh I know," she says, brushing her hair back again and winking into the sun. "But you know, exams are over, and I thought, 'Why not? You only live once.'"

He takes her advice. "Let me buy you tea," he says quickly, not staring at her because he's been told that tends to scare them away. "We'll get something decent in you." Then he backpedals. "You know, something not biscuits or that shite breakfast from the hotel." 

He stands so that she can't let him down gently and turns back to her. "I'm Owen Harper." 

When he offers her a hand up, she takes it with a smile. "Katie Russell."

5.

The A&E is chock-a-block with bodies, some moving and some not, and he's wasting his time on this wanker. Owen stares at his gloves while the monitor beeps. The nurse is all but sitting on the chest, up to her elbows in red, her hands working to stop the bleeding. The rhythm on the machine-spat strips out is asystole. 

The body is cooling already—plastered drunk who decimated a crowd of schoolchildren with his battered Vauxhall an hour ago. Out in the hallway some mother is screaming over her child's battered body, even cooler. 

The monitor sings on, and he watches the nurse when she turns towards him, eyes flashing. "Do something."

He shrugs. 

"Do something!"

He turns off the monitor and checks his watch. Four fifty-seven.

"You're not God," she says as he pulls off his gloves. "You're not God!" Owen tosses them in the bin as he walks out to the hallway.

He bloody well should be. 

END


End file.
